Y2Kupid works for graduate students
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*One feature of the Y2Kupid
dance was a live Dating Game show, hosted by John
Basso (l) of the Woodrow Wilson School, with
"bachelorette" Beverley McKeon of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering as one of the contestants.
Winners received gift certificates for dinner at
T.J.'s Trattoria and the Ferry House. (Photo by
Andrea Tambolotti)
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The locale featured not only a dance floor and a downstairs bar but also "an upstairs library where love match lists were distributed and tarot cards read," said Ann Morning, graduate student in Sociology.
The "love match lists" were the product of a computerized service designed by a group of graduate students in the Office of Population Research (OPR) to promote interest and participation in the dance.
"About a month before," explained Morning, "we set up a Love Match Questionnaire website, where grad students could answer questions such as 'What are you most likely to be doing on Saturday night?' and 'What is the basis of true love?' After we had the site up for three weeks, we closed it down and set up a database of the 200-plus entries we received."
Using the statistical software package Stata, Morning and Andrea Tambalotti of Economics made up matches based on the students' responses and distributed lists of matches at the party, which was attended by some 300 people. Morning was coorganizer of the event with fellow OPR graduate students Lauren Hale of the Woodrow Wilson School, GSG social chair, and Karthick Ramakrishnan of Politics, GSG treasurer.
GSU/GSG founded in 1989
The dance was the latest in a series of successes by the GSG, which was founded in 1989 as the Graduate Student Union by a group of students who "felt marginalized and cut off from the rest of the University," according to GSG chair Eszter Hargittai, graduate student in Sociology.
The GSG mission is "to provide a unifying voice to express graduate student concerns to the Princeton administration, offer a forum for discussion of issues important to graduate students, and also sponsor and cosponsor social events on campus."
During the past 10 years, the organization has made dental coverage available at discounted rates for their constituency, lobbied successfully for the inclusion of graduate students in the campus directory and the Credit Union, and successfully petitioned for an ethernet connection to the Graduate College and computer clusters in graduate apartment complexes.
Among "goals for the future," Hargittai cites "improving the benefits given to post-enrolled students, providing options for eye care, increasing graduate student representation on University committees, determining where the University health care plan can be improved, and studying the transportation system on campus and how it can be improved."
The GSU consists of one representative from each department or academic program, plus representatives from various housing groups and special interest groups on campus.
For more on the GSG, see www.princeton.edu/~gsg/.
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